Sourdough Bread

I recently read an article about how and why most of us resorted to baking during quarantine. Whether is it anxiety baking or procrastibaking, as the article states, it is an activity that we enjoy to let time pass during confinement and have a good delicious product, that is usually more delicious because we made it ourselves.

Sourdough bread recipe Bakalian mills cookin5m2 -EOS 5D Mark IV_1650

I was never really into baking bread. I LOVE eating bread, but when it comes to making it, whether it is our local thin chewy pita bread or a good crusty loaf, my motto was (a literal translation of an Arabic saying) buying it rather than raising it. That was until confinement hit us and I decided to start raising my bacteria pet: Quarant7ino (the 7 reads as the other H sound in Arabic, and t7in/t-hin means flour)
Yes, I started a sourdough starter from scratch.
I did a lot of research and checked out different sources, watched videos, read articles, asked people, got helpful replies and tips on instagram, looked into different flours and methods, and now I am finally able to say
I MADE A GOOD LOAF Continue reading “Sourdough Bread” →

The Spill: Food is Political

Food is political
In my country food changed from being a commodity into a tool used by the ever-ruling parties to tame all the citizens especially those who dissed those parties when October 17 felt like a breath of fresh air.

The Spill Political Food cookin5m2

Food is political.
And politics is now dictating what we eat and how we cook.
With the soaring prices of everything due to the inflation and the collapse of the local currency against the dollar, people resorted to looking for alternatives. Imported goods have tripled if not quadrupled in price, which affected most of the local industries as they heavily rely on imported raw materials, which caused their price to also spike, since their only way of getting dollars is at the higher black market rate that is almost reaching 6 to 7 times more than the official rate. With the –expected– lack of support from the government, it is the least described as hell. Continue reading “The Spill: Food is Political” →

Pickled Wild Thyme

I made this recipe more than a year ago.
I haven’t shared recipes on the blog all the way from July 2019 to May 1st 2020. Things that kept me away ranged from getting sick to full on clown rehearsals followed by the trip and performances in Barcelona as part of a HUGE festival, then getting back home to the major instability starting from October till now.
I made and shot many recipes, prepared them and stored them away on a piece of paper or in my brain or on my hard drive. I know that at some point, I’ll share them, and here is one from the archives that deserves to see the light.

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This post might sound melancholic.
It is.
I want us, through this post, to go back in time when things seemed more “normal” on the surface. Continue reading “Pickled Wild Thyme” →

The Spill: Post-Pandemic & Online Foodies

This is not a pity party. This is what goes inside my head when scrolling on facebook and Instagram, and I see stories and sponsored posts.

Food topics are something that will always get me going. If the talk didn’t start there, it will go there eventually. TRY ME. It is something I am very passionate about and I’m always looking for ways to learn more and share the knowledge to my circles, the actual or virtual ones.

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We can all agree that this year has been a very shitty one, and particularly being in Lebanon has not made things a little more digestible. Now that lockdown is not enforced anymore, and social distancing is not being practiced except in establishments that might get fined for violations, I am seeing little changes in behaviors related to food, and some behaviors that have not changed, and in my opinion they should. Continue reading “The Spill: Post-Pandemic & Online Foodies” →

The Spill: Pandemic in Lebanon Edition

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I cannot pretend now that we are not in a pandemic no matter how much I try to avoid and ignore it.
A big part of the world is on lockdown and living in stress due to home captivity and the looming dangers of the virus. While in Lebanon, we are blessed with an incompetent government that failed (not only now,… it is an ongoing series of failures that were somehow hidden for over 30 years) to provide a decent living for its citizens, with a pandemic/crisis or without.

Now, it’s been a little over 2 months since the unofficial state of emergency and lockdown in action. I was in Amman-Jordan in the beginning of March for a workshop and came back on March 11th on the last flight from Amman before stopping all flights to and from Beirut. We didn’t expect this to happen. I was sort of considering skipping the flight and staying in Amman, but since it is been 2 months and we’ve seen barely any changes, I am glad I didn’t. Continue reading “The Spill: Pandemic in Lebanon Edition” →